Compare Folders For Duplicates – How To Compare “Source” And “Target” Folders

There are situations where merging folders or comparing two or more folders is necessary. In such cases a “source” folder should not be checked for duplicates and should only be compared with one or more “target” folders. Comparing two or more folders for duplicates is very easy using the “Exclude From Self Scan” feature in the folders list.

Disable “Self-scan”

If self-scan for folder ‘VSD’ is disabled (as displayed in the image above) the files inside that folder will not be compared against each-other – they will be compared only with files that are located inside the other folders that are added in the folders list.

If self-scan is disabled for the folders ‘VSD’ and ‘VSD1’ the files in ‘VSD’ will be compared with the files in ‘VSD1’ and vice-versa instead of comparing all the files in ‘VSD’ and ‘VSD1’ against each other.

As some of our users still have doubts how this feature works, here are some extra examples:

Scenario1:
Folders in the folder list:
[ ][ ]vsd
[ ][ ]vsd1
All files in both folders are compared against each other.

Scenario2:
Folders in the folder list:
[ ][x]vsd
[ ][ ]vsd1
Files inside ‘vsd’ will be compared only with the files in other folders – in this case ‘vsd1’. They will not be compared with each other. The files in ‘vsd1’ will be compared with the files in all other folders and they will be compared among each other too – which is the difference with ‘vsd’.

Scenario3:
Folders in the folder list:
[ ][x]vsd
[ ][x]vsd1
Files in ‘vsd’ will not be compared against each other. Files in ‘vsd1’ will not be compared against each other. Files in ‘vsd’ will be compared with the files in ‘vsd1’ and vice-versa. If there were more folders in the list files in ‘vsd’ would be compared with those too. Also files in ‘vsd1’ would be compared with them too.

Ticking ‘Disable self scan’ tells the application not to compare the items inside the corresponding folder with each-other.

Self-scan can be disabled for a folder by ticking the checkbox in front of the corresponding folder name. There are two columns in front of the folder name column. The column with the icon that illustrates a red circle with a white dash inside contains the “Disable self-scan” check-boxes.